


tuesdays and forgetfulness

by eudaimon



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fairytales were invented in Russia. Happy endings, San Francisco (+ sock feet and cardigans, which is not EXPLICITLY mentioned, but that's absolutely how they live their lives).</p>
            </blockquote>





	tuesdays and forgetfulness

There's a house in San Francisco with a beautiful garden and a cluttered study, but they barely spend any time there while she's growing up. Their little girl is weaned on schematics. She's raised on star-stories. It's not easy, not at first, bringing up a baby on the Enterprise, fighting for the right to do that, but the Captain has always been a sucker for a pretty face and she is pretty, the prettiest, a perfect match of the two of them. She is the spitting image of her father, except for her eyes, the green of aged copper, which are Chekov's, and his mother's before him.

He tells her stories about stories.

Off-duty, he's almost always holding her. He's learned to function one handed. He talks to her in a mongrel mix of English and Russian, some things which Sulu is _sure_ are gibberish, but all of it beautiful. When she was a tiny child, Demora just watched Pavel with eyes which echoed his own but as she gets older she's picking up words from both of them, so it's _da, Papa_ this and _please, daddy_ that.

She likes stories with fighting the best. Secretly, Sulu thinks it's because those are the ones that Chekov most enjoys _telling_. He shoves both sleeves of his cardigan up to his elbows and gets animated, pushes at his hair with his fingers which makes it stands up. Demora laughs and Chekov lights up from the inside out.

Some days, it seems like all Chekov does is tell stories. Sulu's started to think of Russia as a place where they put stories in the water instead of calcium and fluoride, so that's what built up Pavel Chekov's bones and it's in his daughter's bones too.

(Then again, it might just be the fact sometimes they make him jealous, a little, the easy way that Chekov talks to their daughter, the way she fits on his hip like she was made to fit there which, in a way, in a very real way, she was, woven out of strands of two sets of D.N.A to be a very perfect expression of their hope for the world. She looks really like one of Sulu's sisters when they were babies, if his sisters had had Pavel Chekov's glass-green eyes).

Today, they're talking about where babies come from. Not the biology, not yet, but a deeper, stranger story. Chekov's story about where babies come from is tied up with beautiful women with sad eyes and the sound that snow makes when it falls. Falling snow always has a sound in Chekov's stories. To him, in his head, it sounds like that soft, sad ringing of tiny, far away bells. He tells Demora how she was delivered to them by a bird with beautiful many-coloured feathers, a bird which was neither Russian or Californian, and where it come from, who can say? She was brought to them on a night when the stars were singing, and a beautiful woman held her in her arms and blessed her in many languages (Uhura’s her god-mother. Sometimes, on some days, it feels like Demora likes her better than either of her actual _parents_ ), and he, her Papa, fell asleep with her in his arms and taught her heart to beat. 

Maybe that's the problem: Sulu's heart will always beat on a slightly different schedule to his daughter's and her Papa's, so he'll be in love with them both forever, half a beat behind.

Over the years, their quarters have evolved and expanded. Sulu hates Demora eating replicated food so he co-ops as much as he can from the hydroponic garden...He grows a lot of it, so he imagines that it's his prerogative and, in the kitchenette where Chekov's desk used to be, he chops vegetables for soup and baby food while Chekov does laundry one handed and, somehow, the baby story leads into one about where love resides. The dog is under everybody's feet, shaggy and ridiculous, but Sulu loves him. When he first bought him home, Chekov called him 'Yarn Dog' and complained that he stared, which made him nervous, but Sulu named him Kuro, and, when Demora was born, Kuro lay down under her crib like he was keeping watch, and Chekov never really complained about him after that.

He's told this one before; Sulu loses count of the different ways in which Chekov's told Demora the story of his parent's relationship. Sometimes, his father sings love songs for his mother on the bank of the river. Sometimes, his mother wears a crown. Always running, though. Never apart. Which doesn't mean that it isn't one of Sulu's favourites.

*

_Once upon a time, my Mama met my Papa on a bridge between one part of the city and the other. There were lights shining on the surface of the Neva like a lot of stars. My mother was shining too, I think. She caught my father's eye._

_My Mama, your Babooshka, Marta, she used to run, loved to run, adored to run, knew running in her bones and she never really stopped running, but, for your Dedushka, she slowed down, I think, for a while._

_Now, for us, my Piter, Sankt-Peterburg, is many millions of miles away, my sweetheart, my rose, and we must make new homes for our hearts. Your Papa met your Daddy on a bridge too, a a different kind of bridge, already at his helm. I was the runner, baby, like my Mama before me. Like my Papa, your Daddy is a man with a steady hand. We need a steady hand, baby, the people like me and you, we who have a bit of the stars in our nature. We love like fireworks, fire and the smell of smoke, and what you must remember, precious baby, about fire is this:_

_Fire needs air if it is to go on burning._

*

Sometimes, solemnly, Pavel insists that all stories were invented in Russian, different stories in different places, sad ones for Siberia, melodrama for Vladivostok, so close to the ocean, humour for Moscow. Only ever love stories for St Petersburg.

"Where do the ones with happy endings come from?" asks Sulu, pressing a kiss to Chekov's forehead, against the line of his hair as Chekov stifles a yawn and brushes his fingers against Sulu's cheek. Kuro snores softly at the foot of the bed and Sulu nudges him with his foot.

"San Francisco," he says. "A house in San Francisco with a beautiful garden where we never get to spend any time. Maybe when Demi is older, _da_?"

Sure.   
Why not? 

He falls asleep with his daughter's papa in his arms and his dog sleeping at his feet, and he dreams far-away dreams of beautiful gardens and cluttered desks, a little fire and happy endings, all of it joined by bridges, all of it bathed in natural light.

Happily ever after.  
The end.

There are worse ways to spend a life.


End file.
